Since the invention of the electric guitar, many incredible players have expanded the boundaries of the instrument and one of them was Jimmy Page. An excellent session guitarist for years who also learned all about production, he first achieved fame as a member of The Yardbirds and then entered Rock history as the guitar player, co-songwriter and producer of Led Zeppelin, one of the most influential bands of all time.
Although Page was deeply focused on Led Zeppelin’s career during the 1970s, after the band ended in 1980 following John Bonham’s death, he began to pay more attention to what was happening in music and to this day, he frequently attends concerts in London. Over the decades, he has spoken about many of his peers, sharing his opinions on several of them, including the late Eddie Van Halen.
What is Jimmy Page’s opinion on Eddie Van Halen
Jimmy Page is a big fan of Eddie Van Halen was really happy by what the guitarist did to guitar playing. “Nobody (really impressed me) like Django Reinhardt. (But the new guitarists) for instance, like Eddie Van Halen, (he’s) got an amazing technique, with all this sort of hammering on and everything. I can’t do that, but you know, at least they (the new guitarists) are stretching the horizons and everything. Which is great,” Jimmy Page said in an interview with Guitar Show in 1985.
One year later he praised him again, telling Guitar World “He is (an extraordinary guitar player). He’s developed a technique which is really good. As far as pushing the guitar onwards, yeah, great. That’s what it is all about. I am extremely aware of him, actually. I take my hat off to him for working out that technique (pioneering of the hammer-on technique). You know, you talk about what I’ve done on the guitar and that’s what he’s done on the guitar.”
Jimmy Page continued:
“As far as it goes, it’s an incredible technique for what he does. I must say that, I can’t do it. I can’t smile like him either. It’s a really good technique but as I said I can’t play like that. That’s what we were talking about earlier: we’re talking about extremes now. That’s what’s so good about guitar players,” Jimmy Page said.
Curiously, Jimmy Page only became aware of Van Halen in the 1980s, when Led Zeppelin was already over. During the conversation with Guitar World, he was asked about bands like Ratt and Mötley Crüe, and mentioned that someone had told him that he should go buy Van Halen records. “Yeah, I’ve heard the names. I saw one Mötley Crüe video the other night. Someone asked me once about Van Halen and I didn’t know if it was a group or what. They said, ‘Oh, you’re kidding? You’re putting me on?'”
“And I said, ‘No, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of them.’ This was in England and a radio interview and it wasn’t until much later, ‘Jump’ and all that business, that I heard of them. This was three years beforehand. Mind you the guy did say, ‘Do yourself a favor and go and buy his album (laughs),’” Jimmy Page told Guitar World.
Jimmy Page said Eddie Van Halen was the “real deal”
Jimmy Page’s opinion on Van Halen didn’t change over the decades and they became good friends. When the Dutch-American guitar player passed away in 2020 at the age of 65, after years battling cancer, Zeppelin’s guitarist and producer posted a special message on his social media. Page said that he was the real deal and a pioneer.
“It is with great sadness that I heard the passing of Eddie Van Halen. He was the real deal. He pioneered a dazzling technique on guitar with taste and panache that I felt always placed him above his imitators. It was good to see him featured at the Met’s Play It Loud Exhibition. R. I. P. Eddie,” Jimmy Page said.
Interestingly, the late Eddie Van Halen once credited Jimmy Page as the inspiration behind his tapping technique. He got the idea after going with his brother Alex to see Led Zeppelin perform live at The Forum in the early 70s. That night, he saw Page playing a few notes with one hand and decided to try and develop that technique himself. “I saw Led Zeppelin back in, I think it was ’70, ’71, something like that. Jimmy Page had his arm up in the air. He was doing pull-offs on the G string, or the B string. I said, wait a minute, and I took my right hand, and I put it where the nut is. I just moved it up, and kept going up the neck.”
Eddie Van Halen continued:
“So I used my right index finger as the nut, like a capo. Then I reversed it, and I used my index finger of my left hand as the nut, and the finger on my right hand is now just an extension of another finger on my left hand. That’s where it came from,” Eddie Van Halen told Fuzz magazine in 1998.
When Van Halen was still playing bars and beginning to write their own songs, they used to cover many bands and Led Zeppelin was one of them.
Van Halen once said Jimmy Page was sloppy when playing live
Although Eddie Van Halen praised Jimmy Page multiple times over the years and they were good friends, when he was younger, Eddie said that Page was a bit sloppy when playing guitar live with Led Zeppelin.
“Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. ‘Led Zeppelin’ and ‘Led Zeppelin II’ are classics. As a player, he’s very good in the studio. But I never saw him play well live. He’s very sloppy. He plays like he’s got a broken hand and he’s two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What’s the purpose?” Eddie Van Halen said in an interview with Guitar World in 1981.
Possibily the final time or one of the final times they saw each other was when Van Halen was in England and went to visit the Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale in a hotel. Coincidentally, Page who is a good friend of the singer was there too.
Coverdale said that the three sat down and while he and Page were having a cup of tea, Eddie went to the minibar at ten in the morning and grabbed a beer. That was the final time Coverdale saw Van Halen.